


Whiskey Delta

by primreceded



Category: Left 4 Dead, Left 4 Dead 2, Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-14
Updated: 2013-09-14
Packaged: 2017-12-26 12:54:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,396
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/966165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/primreceded/pseuds/primreceded
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam and Dean are in Savannah when it all goes down. Since there's no definite timeline for L4D that I could find when I started writing this, other than a banner in the mall campaign that proclaims a store will be re-opening in fall of 2009, it is at least set before then. Dean's deal is looming, so I did take some liberties with the timing for <i>Supernatural</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whiskey Delta

**Author's Note:**

> **Title:** Whiskey Delta  
>  **Rating:** pg13  
>  **Fandom:** Supernatural/Left 4 Dead 2  
>  **Disclaimer:** All _Supernatural_ characters, themes and recognizable settings belong to Eric Kripke, the CW and whoever else is running the show these days. All _Left 4 Dead_ characters, themes and recognizable settings belong to Turtle Rock Studios, Valve, and others.   
> **Char/Pair:** Dean Winchester, Sam Winchester, Ellis, Nick  
>  **Prompt:** None  
>  **Spoilers:** For early season Supernatural  
>  **Warnings:** Zombies and language. Also, unbeta'd  
>  **W/C:** 5,417  
>  **A/N:** Er. Yeah. My original authors notes said this took two years. That was at least a year ago *headdesk*

They’re in Georgia, twenty miles outside of Savannah, when the knocking starts. Or at least that’s when Dean first hears it, since Sam has been snoring like hell only knows what in the passenger seat for the last two hours, has only just stopped because Dean couldn’t take it anymore and pinched his thigh.

“Hear that?” Dean asks, voice slotted low so Sam can. 

His brother shifts in his seat, brow furrowed as he listens, eyes still half lidded with sleep. He rubs absently at his leg, at the bruise forming under his jeans where Dean had held tight. Asks, “What is it?” 

“Knowing us?” Dean starts as he signals, pulls the car over to the side of the road. “Nothing good.”

\---

If ever there were anything wrong with the Impala that Dean himself could not fix, the duty would usually befall unto Bobby. But with the grizzled hunter thousands of miles away and Dean without the facility to do any type of repairs, it’s still a lot surprising to Sam when Dean pulls into the first garage they come across - in Savannah now, flirting at the edges but not quite in the city proper - and lets some kid in a pair of coveralls and a trucker cap poke under the hood of his baby. 

Dean’s voice is just shy of hysterical when he asks, “Can you see anything?”

“Looks like a busted connecting rod, from what I can figure,” the kid says. He straightens and closes the hood back, wipes his greasy hands on his equally greasy coveralls. He’d introduced himself as Ellis, even though the patch on his chest said otherwise. “They wear out sometimes, other times folks try to fix’em theirselves and it doesn’t turn out like expected.” 

Dean bristles at that, because he did, in fact, fix it himself. 

“Looks like you made it here in time, though. Easy ‘nough to fix, if you got the parts.” 

“Let me guess,” Sam starts. “You don’t have the parts?”

“Naw,” Ellis says, wiping still-greasy fingers along the back of his neck. “Haven’t had much in the way of that sorta business, what with that new fancy place on the other side of town.

“We’ve mostly done oil changes lately. Lots of’em. This one time, this rich lady came in drivin’ one of them fancy sports cars y’know? And my buddy Dave wanted to impress her, but he didn’t know there was an oil slick on the floor from where we’d changed it last. He fell face first and banged his head on her bumper --” 

Sam clears his throat, jumps in before Dean can say anything, tells Ellis they appreciate it, but are kind of in a hurry.

“Could order the part for you and have it fixed up in no time.”

“And how long is ‘no time’, exactly?” Dean asks. 

“Three days, a week at most. Things ain’t been comin’ in the same from back east, lately.”

Dean grudgingly hands over the keys after a long goodbye. 

\---

The diner down the street has seen its better days, but the food comes quick and hot, filled with that delicious comfort the south is known for. And it’s got a great view of the Impala if Dean cranes his neck just right. 

They tuck into their meal when the waitress drops it off and leaves with a smile from Dean, with the hope on her part of getting in his pants, and him just wanting free pie. They stick with traditional burgers and fries but Dean gets a side bowl of macaroni and cheese, of collards. There’s a slice of green set between his front teeth and it makes Sam laugh, easy. 

Dean’s phone vibrates to life after a few moments, skitters slightly across the table in its insistence. Sam answers it while Dean sucks the leaf from between his teeth. 

“Hey Bobby, what’s up?”

\---

“Croatoan, you think?”

“Maybe. I don’t know, this seems different somehow.”

\---

It’s starts in the east and works it’s way south, crawling along the coast. Bobby keeps them as up to date as he can, giving them new reasons as to why and when and when will it end. It’s two days after arriving in Savannah that they see the first one, covered in blood like it had just feasted. Dean takes it down with a quick shot to the head outside of a pharmacy, cursing at a mother and her child _for nearly getting in the damn way_. 

People start to pack up and leave after that.

\---

In two days time they wrack up a pretty high body count. The city’s starting to look like a ghost town, with a few stragglers here and there, with Sam and Dean and of course Ellis. 

Dean had told the mechanic to leave, that they’d wait for the parts and fix the car themselves, but he’d declined. Dean handed him a shotgun and the brothers watched as he blew the heads off two zombies standing one in front of the other. Ellis merely shrugged, reminded them where they were, and told them his daddy had a hobby on Sunday after church. 

They had no problem letting him watch their back from that point on. 

\---

On day three, Dean is rummaging around in the diner he and Sam had eaten in on their first night in Savannah. He’s looking for anything they can use, non-perishables that can sustain them for however long they’re going to be there. It’s slow going, the duffel is only half full of canned goods, some bottled water, and, much to Dean’s delight, a slice of cherry pie that had been left in the still working freezer. It’s not a lot, it’s certainly not enough, and he’ll have to track down a convenience store, maybe raid a house. But it’ll help, and that’s what they need. 

Declaring it as good as it’s going to get Dean rounds the counter to head out the back door, to cut through the back parking lot and across a few blocks. There’s a row of old squat houses that have been left empty that he wants to check out, to ransack. 

Dean steps down from the back exit of the diner, smell of rotting garbage hitting him immediately where it overflows by the dumpsters. He covers his face with his arm to block the smell, to keep from gagging. He hopes it’s a sign of the times and not something that had been there amongst the still living. They had _eaten_ there, after all. 

He steps around the dumpster blocks towards the gate but draws up short, just before opening it. There’s a whimpering coming from the other side, low and painful and not at all like anything they’ve heard from the undead so far. It only gets louder as he steps through the gate, into the back parking lot of the diner. There are a few abandoned cars, and one that is, somehow, tipped on its back, twenty feet away, with one front wheel spinning lazily. 

The wailing turns to crying turns to screaming with every step closer he takes, and it’s only years worth of training that keeps him from dropping his gun to cover his ears against the sound. He knows it isn’t human now, whatever it is. Not even being dragged to hell by its hounds would make a person sound like that. 

He’s only got a second to react, fight or flight barely kicking in, before he’s on his back in the parking lot. His shotgun falls from his grasp, and he uses his arms to cover his face from the thing’s wild thrashing. He bucks up to try and knock it off, but that only seems to anger it more, but he knows if he doesn’t try to fight, if he just lays there and takes it, then that’s it, he’ll be a dead man. 

It scratches at his arms, and there’s a loud _rip_ as it tears through his jacket, his plaid and his Henley and finally the skin along his side. The pain is searing and he can feel the blood flowing immediately, knows it‘s going to be deep and hopes there isn‘t anything important damaged. 

He finally manages to dislodge the thing from his lap, and he pushes himself up to his feet, ignoring the pain in his side as he does so. Moving her, and Dean sees now that it is - or at least _was_ \- a her, has only served to piss her off even more. The screaming is unbearable now, and he’s pretty sure he’s going to hear that sound for a long time coming. 

He looks around for his shotgun, figures it must have gotten kicked in the shuffle, and he finds it just before the thing lunges to its feet again. He grabs the gun from inside the busted window of the over turned car and cocks it and turns to aim. He doesn’t have the chance to shoot, though, before a shot rings out and the things head explodes in front of him. Sam peers at him from behind it before it slumps to the ground.

“What the fuck!?”

“We gotta go, Dean,” Sam’s already turning away but Dean just stands there staring down at the thing that had just tried to rip him to shreds.

“Seriously, Sam, what the fuck! Did you _see_ that?”

Sam turns on his heel and stalks back over to Dean, grabs him by the arm and hauls him over the body of the… whatever the fuck that was, and drags him away. When he sees Dean wince he frowns, but doesn’t let up.

“Come on, Dean, we gotta go. You know they’re attracted to noise, and I don’t know if you noticed or not, but that thing wasn’t exactly muted.” 

Dean yanks his arm free but follows along willingly, letting Sam slip ahead a little and pausing in his stride to turn slightly and spit on the dead body on the ground behind him. 

“Fuckin’ witch,” he hisses.

\---

Dean sucks in a sharp breath between his teeth when the hot needle pierces his skin, and Sam mumbles at him to stop being a baby with concern in his eyes. Ellis is in the garage bay behind them, still tinkering on the Impala, humming to himself, low enough that nothing outside of the building can hear. Dean keeps his voice low, too.

“Sam, you think something’s gonna happen now?”

Sam’s efficient with a needle, and you wouldn’t even notice his hands shaking if you weren’t looking for it. If you weren’t Dean. But they are, and they falter, too, when he ties off the thread and grabs the gauze. 

“I think Ellis is gonna fix the car and we’re gonna get the hell out of here and somewhere safe.”

“Sam,” Dean starts, but the protest stops with the look Sam shoots him and Dean’s tired enough and in pain enough to leave it alone for now. They really don’t have any idea of how these things are turning, if they were dead and buried before they decided to creep up from their resting place and start munching on the living, or if they _were_ the living and there‘s some patient zero somewhere that started it all. And if Dean turns, well, it doesn‘t make much difference anyway; though he thinks there might be a few demons who‘d be pretty pissed off they didn‘t get to personally collect their debt. 

Sam finishes taping him up and Dean slips into a clean shirt before patting Sam on the arm in thanks and heading out into the garage bay to supervise Ellis. 

\---

“You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Naw, we ain’t sold gas since the big Hess opened up on the other side’a town. Boss couldn’t afford it no more so he took it all out of the tank underground and used it to fuel his tractors.”

“Do you guys do _anything_ here?” Sam asks and Ellis shrugs with a small smile.

“Honestly this is the first time in a long while I’ve done somethin’ ‘sides clean the tools.”

Dean snorts at that, mind always there no matter what the situation and Ellis looks at him confused. Sam sighs frustrated and ready to go and pushes past the two of them to grab the gas cans from the trunk of the car. 

They don't have time to argue or to stall, the universe is fucking with them and if they don't figure out how to stop whatever is causing this outbreak, or at least to get away from it before one of them becomes infected, they're going to be royally screwed. And really, Sam has absolutely zero desire to eat somebody's brain. 

He grabs a few rounds from the trunk, ammo running dangerously low and he hasn't come across any place where they can replenish their supplies. He supposes he's in the south and if he looked hard enough he could probably find a Walmart or a convenience store or somebody's bedside drawer, but since dragging Dean away from nearly being clawed to death they haven't felt comfortable leaving Ellis's garage. But now they don't have much of a choice, or much by way of weapons and Sam can't remember a time in all the year's he's spent hunting and sleeping with a pistol underneath his pillow that they've ever been this low on munitions. It doesn't leave him feeling good at all. 

“How far away is the next gas station?” 

“Twenty minutes, give’r take,” Ellis says and Sam and Dean share a look. 

Twenty minutes both ways if they’re lucky and don’t run into any problems, which they will. There’s still a matter of Dean’s injury, nearly healed but still hurting if he moves the wrong way, and not to mention that they‘ve no doubt got survivors to worry about - holed up in their houses and frightened. People who are scared and irrational are far worse than anything paranormal. 

“We’ll take the car.”

“No,” Sam says, shaking his head. “No, we can’t, Dean. No offense, man, but it’s too loud even on its good days. They’re attracted to noise, remember? They’ll hear us coming and we’ll be done for. We’ll have to walk it.”

Dean nods, reluctantly agreeing and Sam hands him a shotgun before grabbing his scythe from the trunk of the car. It’s as sharp as the day he’d gotten it and it’ll be a lot easier for Dean to use the gun than twisting to use the blade. And Sam can efficiently, and more importantly, silently, extract some heads. 

Ellis grabs his gun from the office and Sam hands over an extra pack of bullets, warns him to aim first and only shoot when he’s sure. They follow the mechanic out and cover his back as he locks up the garage. It’s more of a habit than anything else, Sam figures. If someone wants in, the last thing that will stop them is a door lock. 

The road outside the garage is mostly empty, save for a few stragglers far enough away that they can slip by them without drawing attention to themselves. If they don’t have to shoot, they won’t. Sam hopes they don’t run into another of the things that had attacked Dean, its high pitched screams and wailing had alerted an entire horde of zombies and they’d just made it back to the garage in time, spent half the night listening to them beat against the heavy metal door of the bay before they all finally wandered away. 

They’d called to tell Bobby about it, _her_ , how she’d been different from the rest and he let them know she wasn’t the only one different. There were special infected popping up all over the place, giants that could rip up whole slabs of concrete, others that would spit some sort of green acid. Things that the CDC had named Chargers and Smokers and who have no idea how they had come about, or how to get it all to stop. 

Bobby had also been able to tell them about the evacuation centers being set up across the areas that have been infected, of the military helicopters that come and pick you up once you get there. Their names may have been cleared, but being picked up by the government and getting poked and prodded really isn’t high on Sam’s list of things to do. Once they get away from Savannah they’ll be dropping Ellis off as close to an evac as they can get before heading on. They’re working on limited time as it is. 

They let Ellis take the lead, the mechanic knowing the way better on foot than they do. Sam counts the lefts and the rights, just in case. Memorizes the street names they pass and picks out makeshift landmarks that‘ll lead them back to the garage, should anything go wrong. 

Which it does, of course. 

They’re nine minutes in, Sam’s been counting in his head, and where they’re positioned he can see the large sign of the gas station towering above the houses. They’re probably only five or six blocks away and it shouldn’t take much longer to get there, even at the pace they’re going. Ellis is chattering on about something beside them, about someone named Keith, and Sam figures the constant talking is a nervous habit. Sam feels for the guy, he really does, but he tells him to shut up, anyway. 

“Okay. Hey, y’all hear that?” 

They come to a stop, Dean stepping up to flank Sam’s right - always at the ready to watch his brother’s back, to catch the worst of whatever fight is coming at Sam. Sam tries to pinpoint the source of the noise but it seems to be coming from everywhere at once and he can’t get a good read on its direction. Not yet, but he knows it’s going to get closer. 

 

They feel it before they actually see it, the ground vibrating slightly beneath their feet, asphalt splitting down the middle a hundred yards in front of them. The windows of a Pontiac, parked half on the sidewalk and half in the front yard of someone‘s house, rattle where they’re opened. 

“This isn’t gonna be good,” Dean says. 

Sam doesn’t reply, just grabs Dean by the arm and pushes him out of the road, up onto the front lawn past the Pontiac. Ellis is on their heals, blessedly quiet, and the three of them reach the house before the monstrosity finally comes into view.

Large and pink, it looms over almost everything, but when it rears back and yells into the sky, Dean can see just how big it really is. It lumbers toward them, not quickly, but its wingspan is enough that if they got too close its huge muscles could do some serious damage. Proves as much, when it lifts a hunk of asphalt from the ground like it‘s nothing but a pebble.

“Talk about ‘Roid Rage,” Dean says, whispers, always joking. And it’s the wrong time for Sam to be overcome with affection, but it hits him low in his gut, hits him too that time is running out and he _needs_ to fix this.

“Thing’s a fuckin’ tank.”

Ellis peers around the corner, slow but it does no good. It sees him, hurls the concrete with far more strength than anything should have and Sam yanks Ellis by the collar just in time. 

“Shit man, _shit_!” Ellis swears, swipes a hand across his mouth. “What are we g’na do?”

Sam debates running back the way they‘d come, screw the gas. But they don’t know what’s outside of town and while he knows the Impala would go as long as she could, they can’t afford to break down again, that Bobby is too far away to go on hope alone. 

The ground rumbles beneath them as the thing gets closer and Ellis loses his footing, nearly falling to the ground he manages to catch himself on the house they’re hiding behind. 

“We can’t stay here,” Dean says, no longer whispering because it doesn’t matter. The inhuman roar coming from the zombie is going to draw a horde any minute, and they need to get away before it‘s too late.

“Come on,” Sam pushes off of the house and carefully but quickly runs through the backyard, the neighbor’s yard, listening for Dean behind him and making sure the thing doesn’t get any closer. But it’s big and covers more ground than the three of them are able to and it’s nearly on their heals. They don’t stop, and they all three sprawl to the ground when it slams its car-sized fists into the ground behind them. 

Quick reflexes and years of hunting get Sam and Dean back on their feet and they grab the mechanic before the zombie can. It lets out a scream of frustration before charging after them again, getting tripped up in the cracks of the earth it just created. 

Sam veers right, between two tiny row houses and hops the fence between them. The road comes back into view and he can see the overhang of the gas station now, could see the pumps too if he squinted. 

“Up there,” he says, and Dean grunts from behind in acknowledgement. Three blocks at most and they’ll be there.

“Through here,” Ellis says, out of breath and when Sam looks over his shoulder he sees the mechanic is limping. Ellis turns right, down an alley and Sam wants to shoot him.

“What are you _doing_?” Dean hisses after Ellis, but doesn’t follow. There’s a temporary reprieve as the monster tries to figure out how to get to them through the narrow passageway between the houses, but they know better than to let their guard down.

“There are arrows here, see?” Ellis says. He points to an orange spray painted arrow on the brick face of a long boarded up storefront. It’s been closed for a while now, probably due to financial reasons and not the zombie apocalypse, but it’s emptiness fits right in with the rest of town now, where it most likely stood out before. The arrow is pointing down the alley where Ellis stands, mostly in shadow. Above it is a crude drawing of a house. 

“It’s graffiti, Ellis! We don’t have time for this shit,” Dean waves him on and Sam’s five seconds away from just leaving him there as he hears the zombie tear its way free. 

“Come _on_!”

Ellis shakes his head and Sam swears, swears if Dean doesn’t shoot the other man then Sam will. 

There are other zombies now, regulars, coming towards them, drawn by the noise of the beast and their yells. They shamble in the direction the three of them need to go, five at a time blocking the way, and whether they like it or not, they have to follow Ellis now. 

Sam and Dean jet down the alley just as the monster bursts around the houses and into the road. 

The alley is damp and smells like rotting garbage and something else rotting that makes bile rise into Sam’s throat. They follow Ellis as he follows the orange arrows and Sam knows they’re heading away from the gas station. Sam suddenly doesn’t trust the mechanic, wants to grab Dean and drag him away and back into the light to take their chances on the zombies, to let Ellis fend for himself. 

“Over here!” Ellis shouts, rounds a corner ahead of them and Sam takes this time to grab Dean by the arm.

“What?” Dean huffs, out of breath but not frustrated, he looks at Sam, concerned. 

“What the hell are we doing, Dean? The gas station is the other way, we need to go back.”

Dean looks over his shoulder, tries to see past the corner Ellis disappeared around, turns back to Sam. 

“We’ll just go check it out, Sam. If he’s wrong, then we’ll go back the way we came.”

“If he’s wrong, we’re sitting ducks, man. You know as well as I do those things are fucking swarming out there and who the hell even knows what that giant thing is doing.” 

“All the more reason to go see what Ellis found,” Dean says. Sam still isn’t convinced, would throw Dean over his shoulder right now and march him out of the alley if he knew Dean wouldn’t put a bullet in his ass for doing it. 

“Fine,” Sam says. “But if he’s wrong or lying or gets us killed, I’m shooting him.”

Dean grins, fair enough, and they follow Ellis around the corner. 

 

\---

 

“I knew a Boomer once,” Ellis says. Dean shifts to look at him where he sits on the concrete, not even bothering to lift his head from the dirty stone wall behind him. It feels like it’s too heavy to ever lift again, and he can hear Ellis, anyway, even if he can’t see him all that well. 

“That wasn’t a nickname neither, his mama actually named him Boomer. Me’n Keith, we’d make fun of’im sometimes but he didn’t care, he’d just laugh.”

Dean drowns him out then. They’ve been in this - a safe room full of ammo and food and barred steal doors to keep out all kinds of nasties - for literally five minutes and Dean’s already tired of the sound of Ellis’s voice. Instead he watches Sam, silhouetted from the light slanting in through the iron bars on the door next to him. He looks tired, but that’s nothing new. He’s smiling along to whatever Ellis is rambling on about now, but Dean knows he’s not listening. Sam doesn’t listen to anybody much these days. 

Dean doesn’t know when he lost his brother. Sam’s been floating in and out of life since he found out Dean made a deal and somehow Dean let him slip through his fingers, preoccupied in his own head with trying to make sure Sammy remembers to eat and breathe. The heat of Sam’s gaze is always warm on Dean’s back, but Dean can’t get Sam to see him anymore. They’re running out of time and Dean needs to know Sam’ll be okay.

Dean zones back in but Ellis has stopped talking, has curled himself up tight against the concrete wall on his side of the safe room. He’s still wearing his hat and boots, a habit Sam and Dean are long used to after many nights of having to get up and run. 

Sam kicks the bottom of his foot, and there‘s so much tied up in that simple move _I‘m bored_ and _listen because this is important, are you listening?_ and _I’m leaving, Dean, I need to do this, but can we, just one last time?_ since Sam was a kid, bugging and begging Dean to pay attention.

“What?” A hoarse whisper, and Dean clears his throat quietly while Ellis snores in the corner.

“You know we’re screwed, right?” 

Sam scoots across the room to sit beside him, and Dean moves his gun to make some space. Close up, Dean can see just how this has been wearing Sam down. There are dark circles under his eyes, cheek bones standing out a little more proudly than normal from all the weight he’s lost. Sam can pack it in when he’s hungry enough, especially after a hunt, and it’s been a long time since they’ve had to split a meal between three people. Even here in the safe room there’s very little rations, but Dean’ll have to remember to confiscate as much as he can before they leave in the morning. He’ll force feed his brother if he has to.

“You can’t think like that, Sam.”

“How can I not, Dean?” Sam shakes his head, too long hair flopping into his eyes. “There’s always something on our ass, man, and I’m tired of it.” 

And Dean is honestly surprised that this took so long. He had fully prepared himself for Sam taking off as soon as he found out Dean made a deal and fucked everything over. Sam’s been looking for a reason to run since Dean went and got him from Stanford, and when better than after finding out your brother’s going to be gone soon? And maybe that’s not fair, not giving Sam enough credit, but deep down inside Dean, he can’t blame him. Sam’s always wanted that normal life, and with Dean gone, for good, he’ll finally get the chance. 

“Look, Sam-”

“We’re stopping, Dean,” Sam says, convinced, _so convinced_ that it makes laughter bubble up in Dean’s chest because how can they _ever_ stop?

“When we get to Bobby’s, we’re done - no more hunting. We’re going to concentrate on breaking your deal and that’s it, because I can’t keep doing this and neither can you. We’re both way too strung out.”

“Sam-”

“No. We’re done.” 

Sam gives him one last look through the fringes of his hair, scoots back across the room and turns away from Dean, end of the conversation. Dean sits, frustrated, staring at his brother’s back, struck dumb at the turn in conversation.

Dean wants nothing more than to be done. 

The monsters raging outside are proof that’s never going to happen.

\---  
It takes half the time to get to Ellis’s shop as it did to go get the gas in the first place. They found the gas station right where Ellis said it would be, and got back to the garage with no problems. Loaded down with plenty of ammo and more granola bars than Dean ever thought he’d see, it was a quick trip, popping off a few zed stragglers here and there. 

Probably a calm before some almighty storm, but Sam was never one to look a gift horse in the mouth. 

Dean had been trying to catch his eye all morning, to _talk_ and this is the first time in Sam’s memory that he hasn’t wanted to listen. But he knows what Dean wants to say, and it’s not something Sam wants to here. He won’t have any arguments on this, and he’ll make damn sure Dean knows he’s not backing out. For now, if not forever, they’re done. And Dean’s just going to have to deal. 

\---

Dean’s never been more happy to hear his baby purr than he is now, and his hands itch to climb inside and get the hell away from Savannah. The ticking is still there, though not as loudly, and Ellis promises that whatever he did will hold out long enough to get them to Bobby’s. 

The car attracts the zombies, just like they anticipated they would, but she pulls through and gets them gone. Dean wishes he could crush a few of them beneath her tires, but doesn’t want to take any chances, so he settles for watching Sam shoot at them from the passenger window and Ellis whooping in the backseat as they gun it down the highway. 

The EVAC is supposed to be at a hotel on the outskirts of town but when they pull up it doesn’t look like anyone has been or has intention of being there. Dean asks Ellis if he wants to stick with them, tells him they could use another good shot, but Ellis turns them down. 

“Gotta go find my buddy Keith, he never could take care of hisself.” 

Dean nods, tells Ellis he knows where to reach them if they need it, and Ellis throws his arms around him, nearly knocks him off balance and Sam laughs. 

“You guys are awesome, man,” the mechanic says, releasing Dean and grabbing Sam. 

“Is the show almost over, ‘cause you’re kinda blocking the entrance?” 

Dean turns to the newcomer, a man in a slick white suit and even slicker hair, holding a shotgun like he doesn’t know how. _That’s gonna get him killed,_ Dean thinks. 

“Hey man,” Ellis says, “they was just leavin’.” 

“Great.” 

Dean and Sam pile back into the Impala, watch Ellis talk the ear off the new guy as they make their way into the hotel. Dean hopes Suit has patience, wonders if he and Sam will end up in one of Ellis’s stories one day.

“Ready?” 

Dean starts the car, grins at the noise she makes and Sam rolls his eyes, even though he’s happy to hear it too. 

“All right, let’s go rescue Bobby.”


End file.
